Signed letter to the editors of the Bellingham Herald, written by Nikki Craft from isolation cell 3D2, Whatcom County Jail, Bellingham, Washington, June 4, 1990, following the Myth Pageant Protest. Responding to accusations of "sick," "tyrants," and "emotional terrorists," Craft writes: "Our protests offer a fundamental societal critique and a direct challenge to men's sex and class-based 'rights' to acquire, control, own, judge, possess, dominate, objectify, and consume women's bodies. By protesting beauty pageants we have aimed at the groin of male privilege and patriarchy. That is why it hurts some so much." Dismantles the pageant "scholarship ploy" ("Why else would the contestants be rated on a scale of one to ten rather than on their grade point averages?"), reclaims the accusation of totalitarianism ("we have fixed a sharp focus on the totality of women's oppression"), and closes: "Shattering the silence of apathy and complacency that so effectively enforces the status quo is what democracy and a free exchange of ideas is really about." Written from jail, signed by hand. Part of the Nikki Craft Archival Project.

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